Three physicians share the ways in which their lives were forever changed by gunmen

At what point does the professional in scrubs become just a person overwhelmed by human tragedy -- and does that tipping point forever change that professional? Imagine going from the euphoria of a job well done, to the crushing reality of lives lost.

In this exclusive MedPage Today video three witnesses to massacres share their stories and their pain.

The witnesses are: Comilla Sasson, an emergency physician who treated victims of the 2012 movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado; Justin L. Regner, who cared for victims of the 2014 Fort Hood shooting; and Corey Slovis, who treated victims of the Nashville church shooting that occurred just 2 weeks ago.

Following is a transcript of their remarks:

Comilla Sasson, MD: "I worked through the Aurora shooting as one of the emergency medicine docs on that night, and I think ... you know, I trained in a level 1 trauma center in Atlanta. I had kind of thought I had seen and done everything during residency and I was ready to go, and I think on the night of the Aurora shooting I was not expecting to see all those patients come in so quickly and to be so sick. It was a really, I think, one of those life changing moments that you have as a healthcare provider because you feel like, 'Gosh, I'm emergency medicine-trained, I can see and do anything that I want to do.' But on that night, I think everything kind of changed for me."

Justin L. Regner, MD: "I was in charge with triaging the patients, assign the surgeons and the ED teams to treat each individual casualty. The last patient that came in suffered a gunshot wound to the neck and chest, and he was the one that I personally took back to the OR to treat as well. We were fortunate that we had enough lead time for each transport patient, that we were able to mobilize teams and have an entire team ready for each individual patient. Not all mass casualty situations are always that fortunate. Because of the lead time and the number of people that we were able to have for each patient, we suffered no casualties or fatalities for any of the patients that arrived to us."

Corey Slovis, MD: "During and right after the trauma, I had a sense of euphoria. We had done great. Every patient had been treated well. People had gone to the operating room quickly. All of our surgeons and emergency responders had just done their jobs and had done them with essentially no errors, no mistakes, nothing where we said, 'Oh, geez. I wish we had done that differently.' And so, as I was driving home, I had this sense of euphoria that what a great medical center, what great doctors, nurses and paramedics I have the privilege of working with.

"Then I got home and learned that what I had initially been told was the other shooter was in fact this poor, innocent victim and heard about the people that were in the operating room, and learned about them as people and not just as patients that I don't have an emotional attachment to. As you begin to appreciate the horror of what their family members and they are experiencing, it's the exact opposite of euphoria. It's this sense of just doom, impending doom, lost of control, the fact that things are unraveling. And you go from being this objective clinician physician or nurse, or paramedic -- or, for me, physician -- to just being human and feeling horrible for what's happened and what's going to be happening as people suffer and experience the pain of either a loss or catastrophic injury."

Regner: "Once you're done operating on those patients, you know however many it is -- 12, 20 -- that are still in your care. Say for the second Fort Hood shooting, I didn't finished taking care of all the patients until about 4:30 in the morning. 4:30 in the morning I finally go home, I basically eat breakfast, talk to my wife, take a shower and then I turn around and come back to work at 6:30.

"For me, I never really had a chance to really think about the Fort Hood shooting or my activity in it for probably days to weeks after the event, mainly because I never got a break. I was in right to the next set of patients that need to be taken care of.

"And that's what usually happens to us as trauma surgeons is after these big events we get no time off. You go straight to the next patient, straight to the next case, straight to the next family. You never really get a break. It's not until you have some event like this, or like this Vegas shooting, where you basically are reading about it or watching on the news, and you start to think about all the times you've taken care of mass casualty events and all the emotions then start flooding back. They almost become too much. They're almost where you're basically telling yourself it's something you really ever want to experience again. It's your job, you'll do it, but it's not something you would necessarily choose to experience again, and I think that's where the PTSD really comes in is the long-term chronic effects."

Sasson: "No matter what you have done in terms of training, what you see in a setting like that, where you have a mass casualty situation, it's like being at war. And that's something that is not normal and it's not something that you ever really can train for. I think as we kind of recovered after that night in terms of having to go back to the emergency department, that really the next days when that PTSD really kind of kicks in and all of a sudden you realize you're part of the club that you never really wanted to be a part of. And you're not the same person that you used to be even though everything else around you is exactly the same."

Slovis: "I think different people respond differently. Many heroic men and women who have fought in our wars come back normal and proud of their service, and many other heroic people who have saved lives and done their job come back and watch as their lives and their family relations just collapse around them, and they have this loss of control. PTSD is post-traumatic, and I believe caring for multiply traumatized victims of senseless violence absolutely can induce post-traumatic stress, and certainly does."

Sasson: "We're 5 years out now and I still have visions of what happened that night, especially on days like the Las Vegas shooting where everything just kind of gets triggered and you sort of go back to that place. But I think it's just so important to be able to talk about it and to recognize that it's not something that will just go away, and it's something that you're really going to be a different person from this point forward."

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